this is just over an hour. [applause] >> how we doing, cambridge? that's a very kind reception. thank you are a match, that was exceptionally kind and i'm really honored he would say that. it is a strange thing to undertake a word of social criticism because really, who am i? but really, someone has to do it. i thought i would start speaking

about the starting point for the book. and since that i'm here cambridge, mass., i've added a talk on meritocracy, candidate elly and the beast sort of thing here. the book is basically starting with a feeling in a feeling that a lot of people can relate to. if feeling that i had after living through what i call in the book, the failed decade. this seemingly unending cascade of institutional crisis corruption of failure that comprised. and that sensation coming to a of disorientation that emanated from this cascade of failure with some being that stopped -- the stock to meet as i navigated sites in the first decade as an adult citizen and also as there

were attempting to report on public life and also finding myself as a circumstance in which i'd asked to adjudicate a question that i thought i could not adjudicate. the reason i could not adjudicate is the person of authority that i would look to seem to be totally bankrupt you. i mean, you got your mechanic and you basically trust that he is going to engage in a good-faith effort to to fix your car. but if you're like me, who has absolutely no automotive knowledge to think of, it's totally possible. an increase in the thought that the pillar of institutions and beliefs to brand them or let corrupt mechanics. , that they were basically using and abusing their authority towards terrible lens that results in crisis.

and yet it was hard to know what to replace their expertise with. i mean, i assume you can teach yourself how to fix a car, but that would be long and are taking. as an advocate life, there's a whole list of issues we have to confront, from the perspective of being an engaged citizen in which were forced to rely on the bedrock of institutional authority. i mean, we're having a debate right now playing out in newspapers about the iranian weapons program. well, how do you figure out the iranian nuclear weapons program in the wake of iraq? and it honestly can i sit there and read the articles that i literally don't know what to think. them seem persuasive that there is a pretty developed program, blasting site read in the run-up to iraq to deception. if you are disorientation and not knowing who to trust in being adrift in a profound way

as the lines of the map in the names of the places have been stripped away. to me it was the defining aspect of reality of life in america at the end of the failed decade. and i came across an data to maybe think this is actually broadly shared, data from the social survey, the longitudinal study of public opinion about americans trusted pillar institutions. and it turns out we've been basically pulling on this since 1973. 1970 through the last time they were going through wrenching crisis of authority is how does a to a social criticism and public debate about the fact of the crisis authority. and so, point up organizations including the pew and gallup started asking people how they felt about their upbringing institutions. and the irony is that that period of time, what we think of as the nadir of trust in american institutions appears in

retrospect to have been a high water mark. that is in the wake of watergate, the wake of vietnam war actually trust in an american trust in institutions and by that i mean congress presidency, banks, newspapers, tv news, science, organized religion are at or near all-time lows. there is one institution in american life that has gained confidence. the only institution in american life that is trusted a great deal by a majority of respondents. that of course is the united states armed forces. least trusted in american life is the united states congress. the approval ratings as he sat on show before are below paris hilton and the u.s. going communist. [laughter] say you have a situation right now in which the least trusted just an american life is the backdrop for foundation is

dilution and article i the representative legislative body. the most trusted institution is the standing army the founders of for and didn't want us to have. that strikes me as somewhat strange institutionally and gave piazza then the question becomes, why do we have this lack of trust? there's more or less two theories. one and this is something you see david works right about occasionally. the problem isn't the institution. affiliates are forming poorly. it's that people just want to lunch, that they're whining, that basically we created an environment that constant negativity and distrust of the people in power can't catch a break. jamie diane and i doubt most outrageous thing this refrain of bankers, bankers, bankers is to his. [laughter] bob bennett was a senator from the attack on the way tattoo for

the book, who has had a fun ceremoniously by the republican party of utah at a state convention for a tea party and surgeon basically said to me, look, people need responsible publications in may of trust, but if all you're reading our blogs, then just think were all corrupt. and i think there's something to that. there's intuitive appeal to that story. we definitely feel the media and 24 hour news cycle of which i suppose i am now a part does have this germanic effect on our trust. i mean, the best example of this is in another era, we would not have seen anthony weiner's. we are not better off for having had the privilege. but i think ultimately the solution, the question of why there's less stress is that the

institutions have performed terribly. the elites telling them they performed terribly. we've overcome the largest domestic been saved apparatus in human civilization followed by war that was the largest strategic and moral blunder in recent memory that nations history of foreign powers be. 100,000 of low-end estimate of iraqi deaths, eight and $50 billion from the oil fires from a 4500 americans dead with many, many more wounded. enron collapsed and unexcelled bringing it one of the largest accounting firms. at the time come the largest bankruptcy in history, defense kind of quietly eclipsed by the wreckage of the financial crisis. i'm only up to 2002. [laughter] were 2003. we then watched a major american city drawn live on national television while we watched a

thousand people dead in that disaster in all of this comes before the $8 trillion housing bubble and the wealth evaporated more or less overnight and plunge the nation into the worst financial crisis in seven years, the wreckage of which we are still sifting through engaging out. so i think you could meet a pretty good case that it has been a singularly decade. and the institutional performance has actually been quite bad. i think that's where the book to understand this crisis of authority to which the nation outlooks. so, why if we have so much elite? i want to tell a story in the book about meritocracy. now, meritocracy is an interesting origin of the word. it's sort of been lost to history. you won't think i'm excessively and foremost i take my jacket off?

[inaudible] [laughter] okay, thank you, good sir. strong advice. meritocracy is good deal potion that is coined by anand and michael young is a bridges left parliamentarian social critic who writes a book, a word as social satire called the rise of meritocracy. a fascinating book i commend you all to read written from the historical monograph written from the event the year 2020, looking back at the history come which turned the point of view in the future of in the eyes that develops a system called meritocracy. and meritocracy more or less as a kind of repudiation of basic democratic impulse. today, the author of the monograph tells as we frankly recognize democracy can be no more than an aspiration and have ruled not so much by the people, not meritocracy, not plutocracy

of wealth, but a true meritocracy of talent. michael young describes these two ways in which intelligence testing in schools and private david aeolus both of those institutions to sort through and find the most productive, the smartdisk amid best and brightest to invoke a phrase as basically having ruled the society. that this is presented by young as eight dystopic vision. it's a work of social satire we've adopted the term as a mob. in fact, young writes the op-ed more or less near the end of his life saying how baffled diaz. i mean, it would elect politicians advocating for a brave new world. for 1984. because young for us all quite happily some of the downsides of creating the system, but he remains the case that in america

today the adjective meritocratic is always and everywhere a compliment. but bureaucratic as always and everywhere in seoul. don't be so for the first to their new job and say this place. it is totally bureaucratic. we all understand what that word means. but you make it on the, completely meritocratic. you can't receive we have given to what is essentially about the social model we more or less all buy into across-the-board as well as a set of institutions, some of which are in this town, that are part of producing that model. and in some senses, it's a modern version. tocqueville writes about the fact there's no peasants, they don't have the word, the feudalism.

of course the slavery. and this idea than in america you could rise from any station of life as far as your talent and drive is that we basically called the american dream. a dream of a sorting process then went to contingency features about your background or your pedigree are less important than what you can do. and as such is a remarkably appealing one. the meritocracy is a specific dream in which we say we are not going to bar entrance to the american elite based on these contingent features like braves and gender and pedigree in geography and orientation. by the people of all different creeds and colors will compete on a level playing field, a metaphor we always use. side note, a phrase invented in 1975 like a bank lobby trying to undo bank regulation. [laughter] alaris. while always going to compete in

the sorting process is going to sort out to find the people who are the smartest and most industrious and they will make the big decision to pick paychecks on wall street. and there is something remarkably appealing about the model. i mean, the fact that barack obama as president is exactly the meritocracy's crowning glory. it is only under the social mindset batman but that he meant that skin color background could be president of the united states. it is a testament to the system that he was able to come to harvard law and before the networks of harvard law and go on to become president of the united states. but during the same period of time in which it adopted the social model, we have seen radically accelerating inequality and more importantly unless covered, declining social

mobility. no social mobility proves to be incredibly tricky to measure and there's debate about which you are measuring them what they are measuring mobility over the course of a lifetime for two generationally. but if you look at the literature, which you see as the strong suggestion that it is getting harder to start at the bottom and work your way to the top, that the odds of starting your way from the bottom to top card that is easier to did at 20, 30, 40 years ago than now which is to save failing to deliver on essential and foundational problems. it is like giving a good thing that it is supposed to give us. and why is that? selling the book i talk about my own high school and i should take a moment today it's always funny to watch people against the elites when you think for one of them. prior to the heritage foundation

inside dick armey during a 10-gallon hat and cowboy boots rail against the elites. another site broke, who are we kidding here? i know where you work. so i want to make sure that i'm not doing the same, which is to sam implicated in the story of this book and as someone who has been formed by the same as situations and keeping and a place that i have profound affection for, which is my high school, a place by the name of hunter college in new york city, a public magnet school and in the way that it operates, it embodies the most noble and nastier vision of aristocracy. kids sign up on a cold winter day in january. 11-year-olds, six creators who have scores sufficiently high on their state has been a lineup and take a test.

about three to 4000 take the test in 185 get in and if you score an i.q. get income if you don't you don't. just one test. there is no other metrics. there's no interview, certainly no legacy conditions. if the mayor's daughter doesn't make a high enough score, she's not getting in. and there's precious few institutions about which that could credibly be sad. right? and so in that sense, it seems relatively incorruptible. what's happening in the high school is that over time the percentage of black and latino students has dwindled dramatically to the point where there's no three and 1%. a black and latino students have always vastly been underrepresented. this is partly due to a massive story about educational

inequity, color of poverty in york city, et cetera, but it's gotten a worse in part of the reason -- there's two reasons. one is kids showing up on a january day as i did arnott is succumbing with the with the same endowments in terms of what their primary education would look like. they come from very different places is very different endowments. capital, literacy, education. and on top of that, there is now a test prep industry, which is of course inevitable because a good education in europe cities a scarce resource is scarce resource can be priced on the market in the dollar suffered capital finance of dollars have defined the merchandise. so there's now a test industry where you pay $90 an hour of the wealthier precincts of manhattan or tutor for your child can be a thousand dollars for what is called a cram school or your kid goes during winter break everyday to work on a test. there's no record kept on this, but now a majority of students

have gone through a test regime. and the story about what happened in this test prep regime to me is the really important parable for thinking about how to meritocracy is broken down. we want to say there is any division between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. thus the foundational premise of our meritocratic division. everyone's going to line up at the starting line and never will jump when they hear that kind can come in at different times. but of course it is the case that in reality the inequality of outcomes subverts the mechanism by which we may provide, even in non-straightforwardly raised straightforwardly raised by a donor giving away to university so their kid gets in. even in the wake of the test prep industry has clear at this in new york, which does view with admirable clarity to this basic meritocratic vision.

am i right in the book what i call the iron law of meritocracy, which started phrase, which is an important one, which doesn't get talked about a lot, the political parties in a social theorist and robert michelle. michelle is a, a german, and leftists, anarchists, heated mike did bougie softness of the social democrat, so you have for the more radical party and then he went to the radical party in donna had the same problem from which all parties and listening to share, which the starting point for the book he read is basically this, why is it the case the parties of the left committed to an egalitarian democratic vision always been at devolving into a small clique of people in divisions? i can understand, he says by

this happens on the right because that's the ideological disposition. they believe in concentration of power, but why does it happen on the left clicks he develops over the course of the book the iron law of oligarchy, which is a sort of depressing irony in the anguish he says basically organizations in the division of labor in task creates oligarchy inevitably. who says organizations is oligarchy? someone will run the party press and take the nose of the meeting. someone will open up the union hall. and those folks find ways to use the power that they are imbued with as an organization necessity to subvert the means by which democratic accountability might be applied in the organization. now michelle van took a dark turn and decided the only way to truly represent the working class was very charismatic leader and became a fascist.

[laughter] so i don't believe in not prior. [laughter] the iron law of meritocracy, which i read about in the book as a corollary, which says he says meritocracy since oligarchy? as that is a concession that meritocracy makes to inequality, the foundational belief there is some small subset of the best and brightest to who would get the most power, that's impossible over the long run to preserve the distinction between equality and opportunity, that the inequality that the meritocracy teaches us to operate an embraceable clear and skew and before any commitment to the basic equality inopportune heat and the wife of meritocracy. and i think we've seen this all of the country.

there's a few other things about meritocracy that i think are problematic. because good? will keep going for a little bit here. i write in the book a chapter about organizations and institutions and one of those is majorly baseball. i read about major league baseball because they're like major league baseball. a baseball fan, a cubs fan actually, which is character building. [laughter] ironically i'm a cubs fan who was born and raised three miles from yankee stadium by a father from the norse side of chicago who raised me as a cubs fan. so instead of reasoning is the most glory and storied franchise of all time, i was given the cubs. which i think somehow explains my politics.

[laughter] [inaudible] >> yes, that's right. okay, so majorly baseball really is meritocracy. and it's basically true of all major league sports. you know, if you're an aging slugger, it doesn't matter how beloved you are for your contract sometimes come you'll end up getting bad shortcut. if are in 1802 can't speak english and no one has ever heard of with a high school education are not even in you can throw 90 per mile hour fastball, you get time. the other feature is majorly useful is that there's huge rewards for performance and punishment for failure. was interesting and reporting as we think about stars and baseball, the most useful players are not stars and most of them live with this horrible

nagging anxiety about being benched or sent down to the minors. you know, you've got some condos and cars and kids in schools and maybe you'll find yourself in the middle of kansas next week. so there's punishment for failure and huge, huge outside reward for performance. 10 million-dollar contracts to the $50 million contracts. in the story of the steroid to me in part the very important lesson, which is that it's much harder than it looks to design a system with huge rewards of performance that is the most racist in the for cheating. enron fashions itself as a meritocracy. the people i worked there said it was in a measly meritocratic place. there was this hostility to bureaucracy. you can basically ignore directives from your boss, cut corners, plus business as long as it worked to make money. and in fact, jeffrey skilling

would go around telling the story about not starting an internet business and she did anyways intimate huge amount of money. so there is no seniority, no wait your turn in some. but of course we saw what happened with enron, which is that the huge rewards for performance cascaded down to the organization were basically everyone had compensation tied up in enron stock that people would watch the stocks during the day because it was what they were going to buy their health with or send their kids to college with. we saw this on wall street. during the rest of the housing bubble and securitization machine that almost blew the entire world there was a kind of confusion between what was actually performance in what was cheating. and i think this lesson is particularly import at this moment in her policy debate because we are in the midst of a national experiment in which we

are converting model of teachers and education from a bureaucratic one tree meritocratic one. we are saying no more seniority, right? that's the problem. accountability, punishment for failure, rewards for success emirs today. enron had this technique called rank unique, in which they followed the 10% of the workforce every other year. for adopting this meritocratic model and we should not be surprised when we got to then lo and behold receiving it in washington d.c. there's a massive scandal in atlanta right now. one of the things that happens in institutions that have this kind of incentive for cheating is that the only thing that stops cheating if you don't have a specific set of really enforced rules as peaceful as it

not, the thing that prevents him that draws line between cheating and performance art forms. norms are incredibly important. i'm thinking about this more and more as i watch our political institutions sink into dysfunction as we await the affordable care at decision. the most powerful powerful prohibitionist of probation assenting quote, just isn't done. when people start doing the thing that just isn't done, then those norms go very quickly in the contingent is spread throughout institution, particularly along the americredit client, it spreads to the institution very quickly. and what u.k. in the culture of those institutions, and this is something that i talked a lot about when i was at the center here at harvard is to get a culture of the open secret and the inside joke because people

know they're doing wrong, but they need to justify themselves. so there's this amazing taped. enron was bilking the taxpayers of california for billions of dollars by basically shutting down power plants to check up prices and there's this tape for someone says, she just asked what is california, he just asked one of them. the supervisor says can you rephrase that? he arbitrage to the tune of a million dollars. it was a joke. they knew what they were doing. her bruised torbay, the goldman trader put together these securities that were designed like an ied, to blow up and they sold them to their clients and then bet against them. and he writes to several girlfriends in these e-mails. he writes to one of these girlfriends. he says, just managed to sell some of these securities to widows and orphans in the airport in belgium's, like he

knows what he's doing. josé canseco is surprisingly readable and fascinating memoir, juiced, which i quote quite an edit in the book much to my surprise, he talks about baseball players talking about going to get their b12 shot with a goody to get their steroid. so you see the ways in which this corner cutting, dissolution of norm and you can zoom out and look at watches the institution of setting, but the ways in which certain pathologies are produced in the elite formation by the process of the meritocratic constitution. cs lewis gave this amazing talk in 1945, where he said -- he said if you have or the experience of walking in the room were talking and as soon as he walked into the room, they stopped talking.

he said if you've ever had that experience, then you have experienced the power in seduction of the inner ring. and he says much of the things you would do in your life that she will come to regret stems from a desire to be on that side of the inner ring, that the desire to be on the inside of the inner ring is the seabed into which the seeds of corruption fall. and what we have in our process of elite formation the u.s. is in, steering me of inner beings. that is at the meritocracy is explicitly. the process of moving from the outside to the inside, but never finding some final resting place inside. the nature of the income distribution in america, fractured and equality means there is always some matter to descend. it just keeps going and going up somehow to defy logic great if you're spending time with your

neck crane upwards thinking about the next round of the latter, it diffuses the part if you have a look downward to think about what people on the bottom of the latter, how they're doing. that is one of the pathologies that is inculcated by this sort of the meritocratic purgation. i think absolute payout to the top matter a lot. i think everyone has it ricin is a price big enough in the past a big enough, because if the price then you are more late way. maybe we'll compromise your integrity for $10,000 or a hundred thousand dollars. estimates as to make a million-dollar suit thing called the good you could do with the $10 million. those kinds of payouts are of course reality in the current system of inequality we produce. the way in which this manifested both in our society is that we have with increasing social disposition between video feeds

and the novelties. people who make decisions and people on the receiving end of the effects of those decisions. and hierarchies of all kinds create social distancing that when it grows your grade can prove to be tremendously problematic. the core of the book, the moral core of the book is an argument about inequality that i think a little different than the argument we have, an argument to back out in a quality is worse for those in the bottom of the social hierarchy, right? industrialization, destruction of the social safety net, et cetera. the argument to try to make in the book is that one of the most pernicious effects of inequality is what makes those at the top words, that the more elitist american society gets, the worse the caliber of obesity produces. and that insight comes from this quote, which to me is the moral core of the book and a profound observation of any hierarchy,

which comes from desmond tutu that is the comment no future with hierarchy. even supporters of apartheid circuit is in the system which they implemented in which they supported so enthusiastically. and the problem of dehumanizing another and inflicting harm in suffering, the perpetrator is dehumanized as well. we have a system of course it should be quite clear, but we have a system that cultivates a bunch of really nasty and pernicious in the elite that it produces. in the system of inequality deems them in certain ways to dysfunction. it creates a self justifying an post-pdc dundas oil the time. i'll speak for myself right now. you know, successfully marching through meritocratic institution requires that the end of the

process, although it's an ongoing process to require says the send it to to read for themselves the story about overcoming, moving from the outside to the inside. i think you know myself as a working-class kid from the bronx and my mom said organizer make as an educator and i worked my way up and now i have a tv show. it's the american dream. cable news. [laughter] [applause] but the fact of the matter is in a straight, white man and i have two incredible. , college-educated parents who provided an almost impossibly supportive environment to nurture me, encouraged me a lot. had a lot of privileges. and of course the privilege gets written out of the story in the biography you write for yourself about your meritocratic achievements. and this is true even in manifestly preposterous scenarios like mitt romney.

i mean, mitt romney got up in the primary debates and he said, i could have inherited a car company, but i didn't do it. i walked away. struck out on my own. junior to cambridge, went to harvard law at harvard business school and started getting capital were a earned every cent that i made. and dan romney gave an even more credible interview where he recounts living in student housing and having to state together carpet samples to cover the floor because they couldn't afford carpeting and the times were rough, having to sell the american motor company stock to make ends meet. [laughter] and of course distracts us all as hilarious and laugh worthy, but i guarantee you it is genuinely felt. that is not said for political purposes. accurate to you she feels like

they overcame. right, we all feel like we've overcome and that is really pernicious. that is part of the psychology of the status quo. and this is true of liberal and true conservatives. liberals are less aware of the fact that is true. conservatives embrace this much more transparently, but i think even folks who are formed in these institutions to end up as democratic allegations peaked on someone or think they've earned that. and that's the feed out of the approach. with that, let's take some questions. you, man. hi.

[inaudible] >> you talk a lot about the education of what you went through and what you just referred to about total fee for merit thing. where do you see that going in education policy? >> where do i see that going along the lines of mayor dave? you know, i think the advocates of the system are pretty clearly winning. i think that's just a fact about where education policy is going. i think the costs and drawbacks of the kind of model that they are proposing are undersold and understood if that makes any sense. and that there's going to be backlash, some inevitable backlash pollitt lee and hopefully in a healthy policy discussion when the downside

effects of those become more manifest. so we all reddy saw that an obviously bad redhaired, bullets are never the case foundation spent tens of billions if not hundreds of millions of dollars because there was resourcing smaller schools produce better outcomes. and this is true in new york. every school that the debate has gone now has nine different high schools inside. and they had this tremendous in fact in terms of reducing the size of schools. after doing a comic turn that it really didn't confer any performance measures. so there's a certain degree to which, this is true and we see this happen at university of virginia, right? and share in this crowd, yes. in outcome is a certain degree to which is a public sector draws them, particularly under this age of austerity, university of virginia in 1990 got 33.5 of its funding from

state revenue. now it's 9%. so what happens is that the public sector draws income at this base is made up by the gates foundation and billionaire hedge fund. and you know, we tried this model before in the gilded age. the first public education system in the state was funded privately by industrialists. at a certain point we decided public good should be provisioned publicly and those decisionshould be made democratically. i wonder the extent to which there's going to be backlash against the vic tour of policy. i feel very conflicted about this and i won't go on because it's not my area of expertise, although it's never really stopped a cable news host before. [laughter] but my mom is an educator. worked in the system in new york and i have people -- you know,

this topic, particularly the circle can be a little like israel palestine. it gets very dicey very quickly in terms of different people on different sides of his education reform by. i think i have some conflicted feelings. being i don't feel conflicted about this we are definitely undercounting and failing to grapple with the downside risk and cost of the system that is being proposed. all the way back road. [inaudible] [inaudible]

>> did you consciously not speak to the idea of accountability has been part of a meritocratic system of adls -- [inaudible] the question was about the role accountability plays. so i want to be clear here. let's talk about failure. an articulation of a theoretical model of what a meritocracy should be. part of the critique in the book is a meritocracy has evolved far away, for which i say in the book a profound inability. we have a system that is relentlessly punitive on the bottom and unimaginably forgiving on the top. i made them with the more people in prison per capita than any in dust realize nation, any industrialized democracy. or basically neck and neck with china. you know, a 16 year old kid in the bronx gets stopped in first and has a dime bag of marijuana will end up in the system and as

michelle alexander has written about in her fabulous book, that sort of marks that kid for life, right? with a system system that would put them in this country missed the vast majority of workers labor without contract, which means if you come in do the dirty look over a tie he doesn't like to call him dude, you could be fired. and yet at the top, it seems like there's no accountability. i mean, more baseball players have been brought before grand juries and juries because of perjury over steroid use by major bankers have been brought before a juries for the largest financial crisis have been years. so clearly yes, accountability is key. i do write in the book in terms of -- in terms of the solution

session of the book, accountability is the first step, the part of the points and making making in the construct of meritocracy, at defusing accountability is inevitable in this system and we are deluding ourselves that we can construct and maintain accountability. the real source of the lack of accountability is the disproportionate power the people at the top has. [inaudible] -- less substantial public figure. >> yes, absolutely. that's really important. there's a lot of things about the proliferation of platform and the internet did she provide the accountability.

do you, ma'am, they are. >> thanks for your boat. as i read it, one thing that came to mind was the concept of reward under this kind of consistent that money was the reward, so it made me think about what values and the reworked thomas was is wondered if he could talk a little bit about what reward can change -- how it will change their >> the question is about money and reward and the role that place. there's something really important here, which is particularly placed on wall street that has been a lot of times, where there is a very explicit meritocratic eat those. it's sad -- people say it over

time, the first line of goldman sachs, recruiting page on the website is goldman sachs and the meritocracy. you know, one of the problems with meritocracy is that meerut sounds great to everyone. sure, if people with meerut worked for people without merit, but it's much more difficult to find. it's tricky. so what ends up happening, the bonus check stands in for mary which is coors is a terrifically self-justifying way of defining their. so i think the massive compensation at the top is part of this vicious cycle in which reward in terms of monetary reward and self confession of error kind of reinforce and justify itself. and i think the other -- the other problem with meritocracy in terms of definitional problem

is it also creates what i call in the book the cult of smartness. and i am as subject to this is anyone. you know, this idea that smartness is this distinct, identifiable ordinal quality like height, or like a bonus check. sunday 10 million or 8 million, 4 million or like height for a gal million stellar than michael jordan, danny devito, and you see this all the time. i'm sure these kind of conversations happen in faculty meetings in law schools, and meetings in the white house and the white house staffers about who should be listened to in the games. this idea that to shrink down marriage, to shoot down the

thing you are deciding that the -- whether it's money or smartness as some kind of easily identifiable non-problematic quality in which people are ranked very obviously has a huge part of the pathology here. it is precisely in some sense because your truce to be so difficult to define but particularly on wall street. you know, if you're a lifelong student, it's nice to have grades. i mean, as someone who gets ratings every tuesday morning and take the dictate as my wife can attest. but there is a desire for grace. there's a desire for something quantifiable and money stands in for that. okay, next. behind you. >> two quick things.

[inaudible] >> you're welcome. >> and sidekick, but the president and stuff like that, deep bank that since eric holder and obama are african-american and stuff and the congressional republicans are way and delete, that they might keep them down basically to the 10% blondel? do think that's part of it quite >> the question is about the racial sub tags of the politics particularly between the house republican party, which is the house republican caucus is not exclusively white, but overwhelmingly way. in the first black president in the first black attorney

general. i think it is impossible to talk about politics and the obama era without the subtext of race. and people try to do it and say it's just an inescapable fact. and it's more about -- the bigger question to me -- i don't think for instance fast and furious -- let's remember what they did to janet reno was the last attorney general to behold in contempt by republican congress. [inaudible] >> right, sure. the fact is they're manufacturing a controversy, to think clearly and rigorously about the roadways is played and this is useful to have dependent and independent variables. so let's rerun bill clinton as a whole lot of behavior that looks remarkable similar. huge investigations, citations against janet reno.

so i don't think that specific is necessarily a bad outfit that includes a racial sub text and they are particularly loathing towards eric holder and it's particularly vicious way that strikes me sometimes unassertive sets out certain kind of alarm bells. the way that i think -- the way to think about race in the obama era more bradley is the fact that increasingly national politics have this sort of ferocious tribal quality big-city politics have. and i say this as someone from the bronx and i love city politics. unlike man, the politics between puerto ricans in the bronx and dominicans in the bronx, that is

ugly. like that is some intense stuff. the politics and is going up in new york city between in crown heights and african-americans in the neighborhood, famously riot. because in city politics, you have multiethnic states essentially a democratic model server resources and distribution. the miss america grows less way, that is the cast that our national politics today. the national politics currently at two coalitions, one of which is essentially, exclusively white. and so, its prerogatives, interests, with a 8684 cannot but be determined and in some senses over determined by that fact. this one coalition essentially taken multiracial and if you've ever been in the campaign office on election day, it is the circus thing in the world to see is a reporter, to go to recall

office of a field campaign for a republican candidate in a caucus for a good campaign for democratic candidate. one of them is all white and one of them is not. and so, as much as a specific racial subtext are racial animus that drives resent band of barack obama as the first but resident is absolutely present. to me the deeper issues of structural fat in american politics, which are now largely in these different camps, one of which is essentially just wait, just wait. all right. you, ma'am, there. i'm in for us in general equity, so if they pass you over. >> high, so i am sort of part of what you're describing. i am white. i go to a really college, i have

privileged parents. as someone else is a generation leading into it as part of a larger group of that, how does one either avoided or navigate responsibly? >> you know, that's a great question. so if you're a product of the system and have a certain amount of privilege, how you navigate responsibly is a question. and this will be broadcast, so i'll get right wingers come about you right-wingers making fun of the scenic, but i'll say it anyway. you know, liberal guilt gets a bad rap. [laughter] [applause] because the alternative is just complacency. no course of liberal guilt is just something that she kind of feel bad about them and you don't do anything with it, we'll send it doesn't help anyone. but people should be guilty

about privileges they have and are earned. i mean, i feel that way. it's part of what drives me. so i think first of all staying in touch and i'm also making decisions about which you're going to do. i don't know you, so you should do your thing. it's weird to be given life advice to a stranger, you know, but making choices to do work that she think is going to be meaningful and it's going to make the world a better place. another, that's a possible phrase, but also a really important one. you know, 40% of princeton grads go work on wall street. to 20% and 30%. herbert. i mean, i understand why people do it. i can't find -- i am judging, but you know, there's a lot of work to be done and i think the

folks that have had privileges have a duty, a moral duty to do that work. [applause] all right. you're going to get the last one back the. yes, you, sir. i'm sorry to do that to you, my bad, dude. >> well in case i don't get a chance to be on your show, i wanted to run by you do three sets in at less than a minute at the end of the teacher thought upon the meritocracy of our election system. because they are easy to hack, we cannot know whether the election results are accurate. since we can't know the election results are accurate, the endless analysis and interpretation of this result are rendered delusional that the media always makes us are based

on either unverified outcomes or just speculative outcomes. because of this misstep, we are constantly misled and misinformed by the media because by perpetuating the myth that there's some good reason to believe unverified election results and the networks and need speculative narratives that derives from that. >> okay, so there's a question about the verifiability and trustworthiness of the actual granular details of how we conduct elections. i'm unpersuaded largely that there's any systemic fraud happening in our election system based on reading about it, the way that i base everything, doing some reporting on it. i mean, i could be wrong. maybe you're right and i'm wrong, but i have looked into it, i have done some reporting,

and my high water discussion, which is happening 22,004. when they finish. [inaudible] >> so there's two distinct things. allegation of fraud and verifiability. it does strike me that the mechanics by which we count the sheep the verifiable, that currently much of it is not that verifiable and certainly not audited, but at the same time, and this happens to do with polling. generally what happens in elections as a general rule is that the polling in the three or four days before the election looks a lot like the result. certainly wisconsin is certainly true in the 2000 election. polls predicting barack obama would win by a margin. it was true in florida, yet.

so i think the basic integrity of the system i do not question. it's possible you're right and i'm wrong and i'm naïve. but i'm just saying where i'm coming from. the broader question of how we conduct elections in america is it's ridiculous how we conduct elections in america. we have no national standards essentially. we have this unbelievable patchwork of jurisdictions. it means that everything from the ballot design to processes for designing a completely different from county to county, district to district. total local control. those differences tend to reinforce as opposed to mitigate disparities in wealth and racial disparities. and we could do a whole lot better. in fact, there was a push come to a bill designed after the disaster with a bit of reform in this respect it basically petered out and was never well implemented and was pretty soft. so there's a whole bunch of ways we run elections in this country

that could be a lot better than they are. but i got at the point where i have a distressed or presented distrusted the integrity of the actual results. all right. well thanks, guys. [applause] ..

>> host: do you start with the original idea as well? some cases you do but most cases -- i do only nonfiction so a lot of it comes up with an idea and proposal and then go from there. in the case of "desperate sons" this is actually my idea. it's about the sons of lisch, which were a prerevolutionary war group, that were sort of our original occupiers. they decided they were going to make life miserable for the british and they were going to go home. it starts with the albany riots of 1765, and cull manipulate nates in the tea party and then the revolution. >> host: who were the leaders of the desperate sons? gee well, paul revere. some of them became -- sam adams. his brother, and some of them you've never heard of, but the triumph of the book is that the

author has the narrative history and connected events and gone lou the colonies colonies colono a narrative form. >> host: where did you get the idea? >> guest: i read an article. what's the insurgence movement in iraq, who these guys, and somebody said, look back at our history. the sons or liberty were the american insurgents at the time. and i thought, huh, and has anyone done a book? and it gets mentioned but hasn't been developed. so i went looking for an author and found one, a very popular historian. he is not an academic historian but a great writer and he set out to figure out. who were these guys and what happened, and that worked out nicely. >> host: what's another book you have been working on for the fall? >> guest: another book for the fall. a biography of elmo zumwalt.

ed a an miller and chief of operations. he commanded the navy in vietnam and was promoted to be chief of naval operations and was regarded by some as the most dynamic naval officer ever, and by others as complete renegade. he was the man who really integrated the navy against the old guard. one of the most ray sis branches of the u.s. military, and he integrated and it brought women in and did everything else. and highly regarded as a great hero. and i think the triumph here -- actually it's interesting because the author, larry burman, first met admiral zumwalt when he was interviewing him for a c-span series on vietnam, because he was influential about vietnam and they became simpatico about

this, and when zumwalt retire, larry approached him about doing the eye boggraph. and the papers were unsealed and we're coming out with it in the fall. and a footnote is a year from now one of the destroyers, the new model destroyers will be named of zumwalt and launch it. >> host: we've been talking to one of the editors at harper kole lens and another editor is adam bellow, mr. bell, you're give us your career in publishing. >> guest: i'm strictly a nonfiction editor. if a been an editor for 25 years, and what i'm particularly noted forking too is pushing books by political conservatives. i started out doing that 25 years ago at the free press. i published books by people -- i'm not sure if people remember but my first successful book was called "ill liberal education." i published books like david

brock, charles murray, jonah goldberg, and i've been doing that for a very long time. when i start out doing it, nobody else was doing it. >> host: is that how you developed the niche? >> guest: i like to be contrarian, yes, the only person doing something. but it turned into a successful business, so now there are four imprints in main stream publishing that put out conservative books, including the one i run for harper collins. >> host: what books are coming out that you have been working on? >> host: well, two coming out in the fall, the first one is a book by chance kepler called "i am the change. barack obama ask the crisis of liberalism." this is a big political year so every conservative or intellectual who was thinking of publishing a book has one in the works, and my list is -- it tends to be as much as possible

serious, intellectually serious. although because of the fact that now the left and the right have their own sphere of media discussions, it's very difficult to get a real controversy going as it was easier in the old days when there was only one big media platform and everybody had to fight for it. now we have our own. it has some benefit in that it has enlarged the market for books by conservative writers, but it means we have to be smarter if we want liberals to read our books and pay attention to them. charles kepler is one of the smartest guys i've known on the right, and i've known him for 20 years. he is a professor at claremont college, and is the conservative answer to the new york review of books and this is a book that stems from a -- grows out of an article that kessler published called the three waves of

liberalism. i asked him if he wanted to expand it into a book, to explain it as a study of barack obama's intellectual roots as a liberal, and one of the things noted in this books, aside from its scathing wit, is the fact that kessler takes obama seriously as an intellectual, a political thinker. this is unusual for a conservative. most of them just call barack obama names. kessler thinks barack obama is misunderstood as a socialist. he isn't. he ills the heir of three previous waves of political liberalism or progressivism. all of which are concentrated in his mentality. there's the first wave was launched by woodrow wilson. the second by franklin roosevelt, and the third by lyndon johnson, and there's a

fourth wave, a 60 # '60s era, and obama is trying to unidentify these somewhat conflicting, and naturally is having a hard time with it. so what i like about the book in particular is that kessler reads obama's speeches, interviews, press conferences. it's based on what obama himself has said. so it's a guide from the conservative point of view to what obama thinks and believes. >> host: what else do you have coming out? >> guest: another book we're excited about, is -- called "the naked constitution." what the foundedders said and why it still matters" there has been a long-standing debate in this country about how closely, how literally one should read the constitution in the last couple of years, since the rise of the tea party, this has become a political issue. it used to be something that was debated in law schools but now

it seems to have real world consequences. i would point the fact when nancy pelosi heard that the conservatives were challenging the constitutionality of the individual healthcare mandate, all she could say was are you serious? she simply cooperate believe that anybody would take the constitution literally, and this stems from a doctrine that has arisen in liberal law fact advertise called "the living constitution." the idea, which is a century old, that the constitution is an antiquated document and we have -- we have far progressed beyond and it it needs to be updated and where it can't be updated, it can be ignored. this is obviously not the point of view of the right wing. adam freedman, the author of the book, has the distinction, which i love, of being the very rare commentator on legal and constitutional affairs who can

write, who is entertaining, as well as being very sharp and pointed. the book is a delight to read. i actually think this is the launch of a significant career as a new -- somebody on the level of the jeffrey tubein -- i see freedman having a significant career. >> host: where is he based? >> guest: in new york, he is a columnist for the new york law jr. and a column list for a conservative web site that publishes very smart and good writers itch expect him to have a good career. >> host: is this an where would he had and approached you about. >> well, many of these books are -- i would have to say are products of collaboration an author comes with an idea -- i have to say it's very difficult to have idea for writers and it's not like you're a magazine editor or newspaper editor you

call somebody up and say i want 400 word ops x by thursday and people will do that. you want somebody to write them a book, you're giving them an idea they have to live with for a couple of years, and although manied temperatures like to suggest ideas to writers, it turns out in practice not to be such a good idea in this case adam freedman knew exactly what he wanted to do. >> host: finally, mr. bellow, you mentioned you like to be a contrarian. do you come from a conservative background? >> guest: it's an interesting question. it's a difficult question to answer. let me put it this way. my mother was a red diaper baby. raised as a communeis -- communist and new york city, and i grew up in he '60s, so i'm very much a product of the era, and so i would observe i've now published i would say three generations conservative writers. eve one is different. each generation is very much marked by the culture, by the

temper of the culture in which they guy up. so i have to say i'm a product of my time in that respect but i'm also the son of a well-known novelist, saul bellow, who had a classic neoconservative tropical storm. he start out at a trot skiesque in the 1930s and like many jewish leftists, began to move to the right when the -- when communism was undeniable and then bus of his concern about the security of israel, and then in general he had -- he didn't they can the '60s very well. it was something that he thought of as an attempt to jettison 2500 years of western civilization, which he, as an immigrant, and nonnative english speaker, had absorbed and used in his development as a writer so he thought there was some

value in it. and in the '7s and '80s he began to, let's say, break ranks with the liberal new york establishment, and so growing up i had in him a very powerful example of somebody who was not -- was independent and was not afraid to challenge the reigning consensus, whatever it was. all though i would have to say he was misunderstood as a conventional right-winger there still is a difference. i hope that answers your question. >> host: we've been talking with adam bellow and bill straughn of harper collins publishers about some upcoming titles. gentlemen, thank you. >> guest: thank you. >> what are you reading this summer? book tv wants to know. >> well, i am having an ambitious summer of reading. in between the books i don't have to read, aisle real -- i'm

reading interested in reading barack obama's story. i started and it it was a pretty good read. the story ended before he gets into politics so it's an insight into the conditions that really led him to be who he is. also, living in politics. i think this is probably an updated form of -- i think it's really -- rem recommended to me by someone who says you can't just talk about the tea baggers and how dumb they and are try to get some insight into the kind of fears and apprehension and concerns people have. i'm almost done with mitchell maddow's drift. it takes